Branding – unique branding
What makes people stand in lines for a product which is not unique? Yeah yeah right, iPhone have a unique design and it have some nice features – but the technique and the specs are not impressive.

The iPhone have no bluetooth sync with a computer, no video, no MMS, only 2 megapixels camera etc.

All which are standard in most mobile phone today. So why are people so crazed about the iPhone?

The answer is branding! Very good branding. The best branding of a phone I have ever seen. The guys behind this campaign a very very good. They have managed to make a craze out of a 1 year old phone.

Everybody including the media have been excited. In Denmark all newpapers, televison and the bloggers have been writing and talking about the iPhone for months – well years, because they began the craze before the version 1 of the iPhone was launched last year. And now the newspapers proudly present their iPhone-sites etc. Impressive done by Apple.

Developer pays for the right to develop
And besides the facts that Apple have been doing a fantastical branding of the phone itself they have also convinced the public that the iPhone is such a great phone that you would like to pay for the right to work for Apple. Yes, it true.

One of the good things about the iPhone is the apps. You can download a bunch of them for free at iTunes. And some you have to pay for.

So Apple are having people pay for the right to do their work – nice 🙂

Normally it would be the other way around – i.e. people get paid for their work. But not when it comes to the iPhone…

Well I’m very impressed by the branding campaign by Apple – but they have not convinced me. I will stick with my old Nokia N95 8GB until the iPhone gets all the stuff I need. Perhaps it will be a version 3 for me??

The point in all this is that there is a new generation of potential employees and customers that are accustomed to a variety of technologies being available, and they expect to see and use them in the corporate world. Whether and how we deploy these technologies likely will have an impact on our ability to attract new talent to our companies and to find and retain customers.

Like it or not, our employees and customers–not to mention our competitors–are using these technologies now and will soon be expecting you to provide them, too. Don’t do it and you may find yourself at a competitive disadvantage. What are you doing about using these technologies inside your company?